Last newsletter in March, MyArtClub.Com was delighted to announce that the addition of 10 more image spaces to each site almost doubled our traffic. We promised to have more information in this newsletter.

Looking at the last three months statistics, our traffic has averaged over 25,000 pages shown each day, up from about 7,000 pages for the same period last year! Total traffic year to date shows viewers from over 100 countries visited, and that the number of pages shown at this rate will reach over 6 million this year.

A big part of the superb increase in traffic has been the addition of more of your art to view. This past week the "Find Art" database surpassed a milestone of 5,000 images on file. This is a great accomplishment for all our artists to take pride in. You have contributed to creating one of the largest and most searchable selections of art in Canada. Congratulations and thank you!

Introducing the MyArtClub.Com "Artist Blog"

The internet continues to provide new ways to better communicate with your customers and prospects. The recent interest in web logs, or "blogs" for short, is one of those new ways that has grown rapidly in popularity. Essentially a 'blog' is an online and interactive diary, which can post images, links and feedback from readers.

MyArtClub.Com is delighted to announce the Artist Blog feature is now available for our artist website users. Your blog page allows you to express your comments and include your images in context with your diary comments or to post other 'object files' (explained further in the article on Objects below). Your blog page shows your comments for the current month and archives your past entries by month. The blog page allows readers to send their comments or responses to the artist blogger. The artist receives all the comments privately and can decide whether or not to post the comments on their site.

The artist's blog is linked from the artist site and MyArtClub.Com features links to artist's blog pages with current entries from the right hand column on the MyArtClub.Com main home page. Several artists' entries have sprung up quickly, so please have a look and post your comments back to the artist or dive in and create your own "blog" page.

Recently artist Robert Genn (who has been offering a weblog for years) gathered feedback from many mostly positive artists about their experiences and comments on blogging. Here is a paraphrased sampling, much more detailed comments can be read at http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/blog.asp:

Artist blogs help artists to: "share human experiences; evoke responses; be creative; get it all out; connect with a brotherhood of artists and art lovers; make a difference; let art buyers, collectors and appreciators know how and why artists feel about their work; join a forum to meet, discuss, argue, critique work and support each other; get feedback and better understand clients and others; answer the many questions collectors have and make that artist-to-collector connection; be more available to followers and gain support while isolated".

To start your own blog, log in to your member pages, use the right-hand box titled "Artist Options" and click on the word "Blog". On the next screen, titled Update Artist Page Options, set the second option to "1" and press the update button at the bottom of the page. Now on your main menu page a new option appears titled "Maintain your Artist Blog Pages." We look forward to seeing you online!

Switching to "objects" on your website

What are objects? Many artists have requested a way to show pictures of their studio or their recent trip or display a poster of an exhibition or download an order form. Out of these requests, "objects" were born. An object is a .jpg or .gif image or a word document or a .pdf file which an artist can post to their site and then display in their information text or in their studio pages or on the blog page. Objects come with HTML code which we provide that you can insert into your text sections wherever you want.

Benefits of using objects.

You can load an image (either .jpg or .gif) and show it anywhere on your site.

You can repeat images on more than one page – without having to increase your website cost! You simply link to the same image more than one page, in fact as many times as you like.

You can adjust the Height and Width to make your object appear bigger or smaller.

You can increase the number of images on your site without increasing the price. Here is the math. Your site comes with 20 images which gives you 140Kb per image or 2,800 KB of space for your site. If you are more conservative with the size of the images, sizing your images at 70 KB per image, then your site would now hold 40 images! You just doubled the number of images on your site! More traffic, more art on line!

You can load other objects i.e. word documents, Adobe pdf files, or text files. These documents can be posters of your upcoming show or exhibition, order forms, promotional brochures, etc. The sky is the limit.

You can include your image objects in your blog pages to show the progression of your current art work, your show photos, your gallery or studio, or perhaps the vista that inspired you painting, etc.

Here is how you do it:

Using the objects requires you to copy and work with HTML tags so it appears very scary to the beginner, but it really is not that hard. First you need to set your site to "manage by size" rather than "by number of images". The choice is accessed from your site by logging in, and selecting "Maintain your account". Then select "Manage your account by size of space used." Note this choice is not reversible.

Art works are loaded as per usual. The object tab opens up and allows you to load your objects by selecting "Add or Maintain your Objects" The objects are loaded the same way you would load an image. From the Object Menu you can view the "BLUE text" located just below the yellow object square after loading your object.

Copy and paste the "BLUE text" into your text pages anywhere you are allowed to load text. You have now placed your images or other objects for display on your pages, anywhere you like.

New shortcut "Artist Options"

MyArtClub.Com has added a handy new tool to your artist Main Menu page, a small box on the right hand side called "Artist Options". The box lists main features artist can use, and then beside each option, shows a "On" or "Off" indicator. The list provides you with a quick glance of the features of your site that you are currently using or could use.

But this little table list does much more! Click on the yellow question mark near any line and a help text screen pops up describing the feature. Click on the actual word, like "Blog" in our example above, and you are taken to the menu in the site where the option can be turned on or off.

Well that is it for the June 2006 update.
Thanks for reading – hope you enjoyed it, look forward to seeing your latest art and comments on the Internet!

Peter Newell and Cam Anderson,
MyArtClub.Com

Do you have any questions, comments or suggestions?
Please write to us at: Webmaster @MyArtClub.Com

P.S. Previous issues of this newsletter are available on the MyArtClub.Com under the Member's Help Section.

P.P.S. please pass this newsletter on to others. Any artist who doesn't have a site with MyArtClub.Com is welcome to post up to 3 of their images in the MyArtClub.Com Gallery at no charge.